Anyway to stop Steam pausing downloads?

[HangTime]

Got an annoying problem whereby when I launch a game through Steam, it pauses anything I am downloading through Steam. It's been like this for a while now but I still can't find anyway of disabling this 'feature'.

I can understand the logic in terms of if you launched an online game, you might want to pause downloads to reduce lag. However, it seems like a horrendous usability oversight to not provide an option to disable this. They should give the choice for the user to decide on whether they want this behaviour enabled or not, as for people like me who mostly play singleplayer games through Steam and have a slow internet connection that is metered during peak hours, it is annoying to find your valuable potential downloading time has been wasted. What I end up having to do is:

1) Launch game
2) Alttab back to Steam
3) Resume download
4) Alttab back to the game.

Not a massive hardship you might say, but the key thing is you have to remember to do it every time you launch a game, and sometimes I forget. It would be much better if I could set Steam to never pause downloads without authorisation. Also some games/driver configurations don't seem to take kindly to alt-tab, I know with Oblivion(?) it used to crash a lot for me when alt-tabbing.

So, are there any tweaks you can apply to change this, registry keys / ini settings or whatever?

 

[Final8y]

I think i read that they are working on letting you choose to keep the DL running and that you can set the DL rate.

In addition, the new content system will allow us to build several new features that we’ve often heard requested. Upcoming client releases will include things like download scheduling, bandwidth throttling, and prioritizing which games get downloaded first. You’ll also be able to download an update to a game while you’re playing that game; Steam will apply the update after you exit the game.

http://store.steampowered.com/news/5856/

 

[HangTime]

Sounds promising but considering Steam has been around so long and one of its primary functions is/was content delivery, it is somewhat surprising some of these features aren't already available. Even more so when you consider some of the 3rd party/non-essential stuff they have included (adding non-steam games to library, avatars, checking for video card driver updates etc). Things I'd like to see include:

-Download queueing. Currently if I want to leave my PC downloading unattended for some time the only option is to start multiple downloads at once, meaning you end up with a bunch of partially downloaded games
-Ability to remove partially downloaded updates you don't want from the downloads list, I've had a TF2 update stuck in mine for months despite the fact it is set to not automatically update
-Ability to set download path for each game or group of games i.e. allow installations across multiple drives
-Option to automatically retry downloads periorically (say every minute) if you receive "server too busy" message
-Ability to filter by "uninstalled" games in addition to "installed"
-Ability to apply categories to multiple games at once rather than just one-by-one

In general I just get frustrated that Steam gets new bells and whistles added that I'll never use, yet basic download manager functionality (something EVERYONE will interact with at some point) is missing. For normal downloads e.g. patches from websites you apply to retail games this isn't a problem because you can use your own third party download manager, but with Steam you have no option but to use their client to download and it is sorely lacking in fundamentals.

Don't get me wrong Steam does some things very well, but the download/library management stuff could do with an overhaul.